Megatrends that will Shape our Future

In a report published by PWC called 'Workforce of the Future', it says "What influence will the continuing march of technology, automation and AI have on where we work and how we work? Will we need to work at all? What is our place in an automated world?"

Businesses, governments and people need to prepare for varied outcomes in every different sector of industry. Advertising is no longer a one-way message broadcast - its evolved into a continual dialogue between the consumer and the marketer.

In the coming years the world of work will change greatly, with competition rising around the whole world, disruptive innovations and radical thinking casting out obsolete technology and new business models that will reshape every sector of work life.

The 5 Megatrends identified by PWC will have both advantageous and adverse effects on humans and ultimately determine which parts of the workforce remain and which parts are made redundant and therefore, must prepare new skillsets by the time this happens.

The Megatrends are:

i) Technological Breakthroughs - automation, robotics, AI, raised productivity and a focus on personal fulfillment.

ii) Demographic Shifts - shortage of a young human workforce in fast-aging economies will drive the need for automation and productivity enhancement gadgets

iii) Rapid Urbanization - By 2050, the world's population will have increased by 72%, pushing nearly 5 billion people into urban areas where jobs need to be created for them

iv) Shifts in global economic power - emerging nations have the capacity to grow if they can keep up with the technological and infrastructure shift development requires; in the developed world however, wealth gap and large scale automation may lead to severe unemployment and social unrest

v) Climate change and scarcity of resources - new engineering systems, alternative energy and more refined waste management or re-use of materials will be vital to deal with a great increase in the demand of energy and water. Then traditional energy industry and their millions of employees will face rapid imminent restructuring.

These megatrends, while providing the context of a future world, do not dictate rapid decline or acceleration of the world's population or economic status. How we as humans respond to these challenges will determine the effect of the trends and how we are able to come up with new innovative solutions and capitalize on new opportunities brought about by automation and increased robotic-production will show how the future of our world plays out in the next 30 years.